Assosierte koblinger

Ready, Steady, Mix for the 8th World Wonder

Graco Xtreme™ Mix products are part of today’s world second largest irrigation project.

juli 08, 2005

The great Man-made River is a spectacular project commenced in Libya in September 1984. This is the ‘river of pipelines’, sometimes called "The 8th Wonder of the World".

This Great Man-made River aims at the mass transfer of waters from the Kufra and Sareer basins beneath the earth’s surface to the coastal concentration of population in Benghazi, Sirte and Tripoli. Upon completion, the huge network of pipelines will extend to about 3,380 km.

Two special pipe factories were constructed in the regions of Brega and Sareer, to provide the project with the great numbers of concrete pipes necessary. These vary in weight between 73 and 78 tons, have a diameter of 4 meters and are 7.25 meters long. This project of the century comprises three phases. The first involves laying pipelines from Tazerbou and Sareer in the South to Adjedabia in the North. The second phase will be to carry 2 million cubic meters of water a day from the wells situated in the Fezzan region, in addition to half a million cubic meters from two fields in the Hasawna mountains. The third phase should pump a further 1.68 millions cubic meters of water to the first two phases.

From the very beginning, this project included lot of paint spray equipment to protect the pipes, as well as the storage tanks for the water pump installations.

In some of these storage tanks, the internal coating showed weaknesses, and in several places, even became loose from the substrate. In order to go ahead with the project, it was necessary to apply new coating material to the inside of the tanks.

In collaboration with M.A.N. Ferrostaal and the paint manufacturer AMERON, our distributor WILTEC BV in the Netherlands selected the Xtreme™ Mix 360 to apply the solvent free epoxy material "AMERCOAT 391 PC". After several tests, the conclusion was that the Xtreme™ Mix 360 was the right equipment to handle this material properly.

A total of 5 complete heated Xtreme™ Mix units were ordered and delivered to Lybia in the beginning of 2005. The job is now completed, and the storage tanks are ready to be filled with fresh water.